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Put a dozen construction workers in a room, fatten them with good food and strong drink, and if stereotypes hold true, the expected results might include catcalls at any women wandering by and a fistfight or two.

A fine art show is a less likely outcome, but that’s the story behind an exhibition opening today at the Brooklyn Art Exchange. The product of an art collective/supper club made up of electricians, masons, plasterers and other tradesmen, the exhibit features paintings, sculpture and other art not traditionally associated with hardhats.

“You’d be amazed by the number of construction workers who do art,” says Art Cabrera, a Brooklyn electrician who creates found-art sculpture with a political edge. Some are talented amateurs, he says, while others “have master’s degrees in art, and do construction because they have to.”

An annual event now in its seventh year, the construction-worker art show is the brainchild of carpenter and Cooper Union grad Shawn Gargagliano, 56, of Sunset Park. Worried he couldn’t top his first show at BAX – “I had 49 years to get the work together; it’s going to be hard to do another one after that,” he remembers thinking – Gargagliano invited some construction-worker friends to contribute to a follow-up exhibition.

Since then, a group of 11 tradesmen have met once a month at each other’s homes for dinner and to shoot the bull. While art is sometimes the topic of conversation, as well as each year’s show, they usually discuss those subjects that everyone broaches over supper.

“We talk about anything. We talk about jobs that we’re working on, we talk about our kids,” says Fred Becker, 55, a painter and plasterer from Kensington who’s contributing two vivid photographs of women nursing to this year’s show.

“We eat and drink hearty. Steaks and great salads. Lots of good wine and beer,” adds Cabrera, 57. “We bitch a lot, like a bunch of grumpy old men. Sometimes we call it the grumpy old men group.”

Unsurprisingly, the title of this year’s show is “Food and Drink,” which Cabrera suggested after one of their monthly get-togethers. Previous exhibit subjects have ranged from “Intelligent Design” to “No Problem,” as in, “You look at a job and you say, ‘No problem.’ Of course, when you do the job, it’s a big problem,” says Gargagliano.

The titles function more as suggestions than as literal themes, says Gargagliano, whose paintings for this year’s show depict insects using humans as their chow.

The reception they get from their peers is sometimes enthusiastic, but more often muted, the cultured craftsmen say.

“Nobody’s ever said, ‘That’s stupid.’ I would say reactions range from ‘That’s cool’ to indifference,” says Gargagliano, adding that many are bewildered that someone would make the effort without necessarily getting paid for it.